Frustrated Shane Bond contemplates quitting Tests

Frustrated by yet another injury interrupting his career, Shane Bond has contemplated quitting Test cricket but will wait for the emotions to pass before taking a decision.

"Everything races through your mind when you get an injury like this. And it has in this situation," Bond told the Sunday News in New Zealand. "You think about giving up and you ask yourself whether it's worth all the effort.

"I suppose what I want to do is take a couple of weeks away from cricket and wait until the disappointment and emotion from this latest setback - which is something I've always done - subsides before I make any decision. From there, I'll sit down and look at things. You can't take a decision like this lightly so I will wait until I'm feeling better first. I can't rush this."

Bond returned to international cricket in September after terminating his one-year ICL contract. He took eight wickets in Dunedin - his first Test in two years - and was ruled out of the remainder of the series due to an abdominal muscle tear. Bond has struggled with back and foot injuries since his debut in 2001 and featured in only 18 of the 66 Tests that New Zealand have played in the period.

"I'm injury-prone. I'm the first to admit that," Bond said. "What I want to do and what my body allows me to do are two different things. The fact that people say I'm injury-prone and that I get injured a lot, well that's true. But it's that other stuff like I'm soft or that I don't want to play for New Zealand that frustrates me."

Bond said being confined to watching the Wellington Test, which New Zealand lost by 141 runs, on television was deflating. "It's deflating because the season so far - the three or four months I've been back - has gone so well. But that's the thing, when you least expect something to happen it always does. To have done all that work and get to the point where I've reached the high of my season only to be cut off at the knees is a bummer.

"I've taken this one particularly hard. To have everything go as well as it had and also to feel like I was reaching my best form only for this to happen is a real disappointment. I almost felt like I had beaten the back of these injuries."

If Bond does decide to quit Tests, it would be a major blow to New Zealand who have just lost their other fast bowler Iain O'Brien to county cricket. New Zealand have won 10 and lost only two of the 18 Tests that Bond has played.